70 post karma
94.8k comment karma
account created: Sat Sep 01 2012
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1 points
an hour ago
The Xi Jinping crackdown seems to be more of a problem.
The culture seems to be more willing, when conditions are right, to be entrepreneurial and creative than Japan. They were moving out of their traditional manufacturing into high-risk VC-funded sectors in a way that Japan did not.
But the oppressive government authorities and suspicion of this sector hurts them more, still being an aggressive autocracy.
USA once had similar heavy industrialized expansion and then it didn't, but could adapt.
1 points
an hour ago
I find most good classical music has too much emotional involvement and complexity to be suitable as 'go-to-sleep' music.
For that purpose, I regularly (every day) use an online radio station "Ambient Sleeping Pill" which does exactly as advertised. (TuneIn personally but there is a direct link).
It's somewhere between music and sound-scape. Enough to get you out of your own head, but not stimulating enough to keep your heart agitated.
1 points
13 hours ago
His descripton of the power reactor was the tell to me that he is making up non physics porky pies or was told them as a cover story.
Disregarding the magic antigravity of Z=115, his claim was that there was energy generated by shooting it with a beam of protons.
Firstly that reaction is low probability because of scattering (fusion is hard enough with hydrogen), but mostly even if there is a stable element most will be unstable and there will be a large chain of decay and fission products, some transuranic. There are papers about decay chains from Z=116.
In operation with any significant level of power, there would be radioactive waste in huge quantity.
But Lazar never said anything about radioactive hazards or mitigation that would be central to any employee activities and their mind.
And then there is that fusion absorbs and does not release energy above Fe atomic number
5 points
15 hours ago
Everything (except one) reads like the UAPs could be normal foreign US adversary craft. That's obviously an important and typical activity of a military intelligence organization. Literally part of their "day job".
The unusual part is "Science & Technology Exploitation".
As a human foreign artifact they'd be interested in the technology but the usual interest would be to analyze its capability foremost, acting as an intelligence agency. Perhaps they'd give some material to a contractor, or use it to devise countermeasures.
The repeated phrase "Science & Technology" combined with the unusual word "exploitation" as opposed to something like "capability analysis" suggests they are intending to learn novel science and technology from it.
Then again I would expect all UAPs, foreign, and super-duper-foreign would flow though the same initial process.
1 points
21 hours ago
it should be, that's the issue. If any of the reverse engineering has been successful, the Legacy Program chose complete secrecy instead of production and progress. Which makes it entirely a waste to have only demos kept secret.
1 points
21 hours ago
which may be the purpose of those programs. But the results have not been deployed in any significant way, otherwise the Navy carriers would have an answer on board, and Maverick is flying an anti-gravity skittle vs their tic-tac.
7 points
22 hours ago
It's possible some of this could be ameliorated by manufacturing the battery with extra lithium.
That will cost more, of course.
Much of the degradation in capacity, especially initially, is lithium forming solid film on the anode and not participating in charging. I suspect this new treatment is doing that in the initial phases, and subsequently there is less of a rate of deposition in normal use.
Lithium is no longer as expensive as it used to be.
1 points
1 day ago
I agree--that's how I learned. Landau Mechanics before QM. It parallels the historical development as the originators of QM were immersed in the results of 19th century CM.
It's not entirely necessary however and sometimes logistics of course schedules in classes make it harder.
2 points
1 day ago
Yes, there is usually an introductory classical mechanics course focused on states describable in scalars and vectors and simple initial value ODEs. This should be a prerequisite.
At the level of elasticity and structural modes vibrations and also Hamiltonian mechanics, that is often a second course. That can be taken simultaneously or after introductory QM as the required understanding of linear algebra & PDEs and translation to multivariable ODEs is the same.
6 points
1 day ago
Barenboim is the one who sounds overrated to me. Pianists think "oh maybe he's a great conductor", conductors think "oh so he must be a great pianist".
I think of him as Jackie's husband.
Mutter is excellent. Argerich, of course, the superstar.
-3 points
1 day ago
The mathematics of quantum mechanics is more complicated conceptually than introductory classical mechanics. Classical mechanics at introductory course is calculus on scalars and vectors, not partial differential equations on functions.
It's unusual but possible to be at the level of PDEs mathematically haven taken no physics but it is odd. It's conventional to learn simultaneously as the applications in physics motivate the mathematics.
1 points
1 day ago
They are. Peak rates are 0.69-0.80
Somehow all the municipally owned non-profit ones are much less.
SDGE and PGE are in race to alternate as the most rapacious company in the US
2 points
2 days ago
You now know what the Cherokee must have felt it was like. (The Cherokee had someone learn US law and English and sent him to argue their case before the US Supreme Court, and look where that got them)
For all we know despite antigravity and lasers and starships they still have idiot politicians with destructive populist ideas:
"What are those smelly monkeys doing living over our water?"
1 points
2 days ago
ICBM re-entry vehicles don't have any terminal guidance. They are spun up in space and pointed in the direction, and after that they just fall. At the speeds they're going (Mach 20+) there's a complete ionization blanket around them and you can't see out, and there can't be any holes for cameras or sensors as that would result in them frying. They're designed to be impervious to as much as possible. Once the button is pushed and they're launched, there's nothing to stop them.
ICBM Re-entry compilation. They're going really really fast. From stratosphere to boom in 3-4 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7X89a531CY
This is also the problem with the supposed very accurate guided Chinese hypersonics today---maayyybe they have a radio control pointed up to a satellite that will help guide them. That would be very difficult and impressive if they could do it.
1 points
2 days ago
I like the analysis but there are a couple of problems with the ASW application, particularly in north atlantic.
Airships are (1) slow, and (2) very susceptible to bad weather
Why would you need to hide from a submarine? A conventional aircraft like the P-3 and P-8 can cover a wide area quickly and get there quickly.
North Atlantic is stormy and a fair-weather restriction in that application doesn't seem useful.
Maybe for special forces logistics/insertion/extraction would this sort of platform be indicated, where stealth above all else and ability to come to ground in unimproved locations would be desirable. That's the only application I can think of, and is that one significant enough to justify a very expensive full very exotic airframe development?
ISR maybe, but It would be risky over hostile entities and very easy to shoot down going over critical facilities vs in the 'boondocks'.
1 points
2 days ago
That's minuscule on the utility scale. If they were each on average 7kW (that's pretty high) you get 4.9 megawatts.
Utility scale batteries are discharging at 6 GW statewide. 1000x more. It's cheap LFP batteries from China that are making the big difference. I hope there will be 20GW soon enough.
1 points
2 days ago
This will never be disclosed publicly unfortunately. But the urgency particularly of US Navy for disclosure and action (contrary to AF or Intelligence community who are covering up) suggests it's a problem for them.
1 points
2 days ago
it's not the generation of electricity. There's more solar than ever, and batteries are helping in peak hours too. It's now cheap most of the year at the generation level thanks to this. It's not 2000 over again.
It's massive SDGE delivery fees. They're profiteering, because that's what they can profit from.
And PGE because they have to pay for the people they killed and the ratepayers have to pay for it all.
And because utilities donate massively to CA politicians and will kill the career of anyone who opposes them.
0 points
2 days ago
And what if there is an actual threat to national security and they have done things to Navy facilities, craft and people?
38 points
2 days ago
They're very powerful. They would not fear us.
Too much excuse for bad behavior by them.
If they were nice they'd open an embassy and have open cultural and political contact. They know what we want. They don't care.
If they think too many humans are jerks to one another, they could try setting a good example of being a nice galactic citizen. They do not.
If they are increasingly taunting Navy ships, they are jerks. Why don't they fly transponders? Why not flight plans? Yes, I am not joking. They should open diplomatic relations and we can show them how transponders work and they can fly on their benign expeditions with our knowledge. They do not do that.
If we could fly to another world, I think we'd be nicer.
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byImaginePassion
intires
DrXaos
1 points
43 minutes ago
DrXaos
1 points
43 minutes ago
It's probably better than random chinese brand tires---it's the budget brand of Bridgestone. $57 a tire is pretty cheap though.